


always and always long as the sun

by juinbug (rainydaydreams)



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 12:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainydaydreams/pseuds/juinbug
Summary: Amy waltzes in and announces: “I’m going to marry that girl.”





	

Amy waltzes in and announces: “I’m going to marry that girl.”

.

Amy wanders into Lucy’s office and drops herself into the chair across from her desk. “I’m going to die,” she announces peacefully, “I am going to die because you won’t go out with me tonight.”

Lucy leans back in her chair and studies her sister: sunshine blonde and present in her body in a way that dancers tend to be. “I’m sorry Ames, but I really, truly, don’t want to. And get your feet off my desk, you’re scaring my student.” Amy looks beside her and starts, as if just noticing the presence of another body in Lucy’s cramped office. The student in question – a freshman, a STEM major trying to argue for a remark on an extraordinarily subpar paper – squeaks and mumbles her excuses for an escape, backing her way out of the room and knocking over a few worn-out paperbacks in her haste.

“Lucy,” her sister informs her, “One day you’re going to get trapped behind all these books and then your body will get mummified by the paper and they’ll make a big fuss about it when they finally dig your corpse out. It’ll probably make you more famous than Mom, but it would probably be a really boring way to die?”

“I’d have a lot of reading material, and that’s all that matters. Now go, I have work to do.” Lucy shoots back, standing up to shoo her sister out of her office and lock her damn door so she can finally write that conference paper she’s been trying to talk her way out of for months. She loves her office, tiny as it is. She chose it for one reason: the wall of windows behind her desk.

“Oh, come on, let’s go out tonight. Dancing, drinks, I can tell you about the episode arc I’m working on for my podcast, you’ll lo-“ Lucy interrupts halfway, gently pulling her sister into a standing position, and out the door. “Honey, I’d love to, but I really have to stay in tonight. Text me when you go out, okay?”

Amy sticks her tongue out: “You’re no fun.”

.

1:18 AM  
AMY: oooohHH my god i met the cutest girl shes so cute im gonna DIE u shouldve come

2:46 AM  
Snapchat: [A series of blurry videos from Amy, dark nightclub, admittedly cute girl]

3:32 AM  
AMY: oK im in the uber and everythig is so good rn its so GOOD

9:13 AM  
LUCY: are you alive?  
AMY: gafgjhdsgjshdgfjsdgjfs  
LUCY: i’ll come by at 11 w coffee  
AMY: ily fghjdg

.

Amy walks into Lucy’s off- and no, wait, she doesn’t do that anymore.

.

Lucy walks into Mason Industries and travels through time.

Lucy comes back. Lucy always comes back.

Amy isn’t there. Amy is never there.

.

They’ve been doing this for – how long, god, she doesn’t even know. Mason Industries, and motion sickness, and unfortunate corsetry, and guns aimed at her, and people who die when they shouldn’t have, and people who stop existing because Lucy messed up. It becomes jarringly mundane, and Lucy begins to suspect that she is indestructible.

Or – not quite, which she finds out the hard way when she gets grazed by a bullet in 1783.

She makes it back, though. She always does.

.

There is a coffee shop that she passes on the drive to Mason Industries. She used to be a regular, before that first trip through time. Amy would drag her there; Lucy would make herself easy to be dragged. _This is her _, Lucy had said, _This is my girlfriend _. And the girl from the bar, from the Snapchats, had smiled nervously from behind the counter and said, Nice to meet you. Amy says you’re a nerd.____

Lucy hasn’t been there since Amy disappeared. She can’t bear to see someone else who has no idea they used to love a girl who doesn’t exist anymore. But today, with her arm wrapped in a bandage, and her entire body feeling ragged, and sore, and desperately alive, Lucy finds herself pushing through the doors and stepping into a place that used to ring with Amy’s laughter as she used to try to cajole her girlfriend into changing the soft indie music to _“something fun! Put on Ariana, my one true love!”_

_(“I thought I was your one true love? I’m feeling really betrayed here.”)_

It’s quiet today.

The girl behind the counter visibly perks up at the sight of Lucy, she calls out, “Haven’t seen you in a while! Thought you might be cheating on us with Starbucks, god forbid.”

So: they still know each other, in this reality where her sister never existed. Lucy guesses that in this version of history, they never spent Thursday night dinners together, watching Amy manage to burn water, and cheating horrifically at games of Monopoly. She looks the same though, this girl that her sister had once bought a ring for, still long black hair and a name tag that never reads her actual name. _Nina_ , today.

“You know I’m faithful! I’ve just been out of town a lot.” Lucy attempts to drawl lightheartedly, and instead says in a strained voice. _Nina_ winces, and says, “You sound like you need a cup of coffee. Go take a seat anywhere and I’ll bring something over.”

This part is the same too – she never lets Lucy order.

Three minutes later, Lucy is staring blankly out the window as she sits at an empty table, when _Nina_ drops down into the seat in front of her, two steaming cups in hand. She slides one over, and Lucy picks it up with her left hand (her right arm is sore from the wound), and takes a cautious sip. It – burns.

Lucy gasps out, “dark roast, brown-“

“Brown sugar, yeah. How’d you guess so quickly? I’m impressed, we might hire you.”

 _Dark roast, and I’m gonna shove in as much brown sugar as this cup can possibly take_ , Amy would say every time they stopped for coffee. What’s the point, Lucy would sometimes ask, of the dark roast, oh my god. And Amy would say: _I know what I like, and I’m gonna live my best life_. And then she would stir in 5 packets of brown sugar as people at the counter looked on in fascination.

Her girlfriend made this exact drink for her every time Amy visited.

“How- how are you?” Lucy asks after a few minutes of silence, because she’s trying to remember how to be a human being while she drinks her sister’s coffee.

“Oh! I don’t know. It’s so weird,” _Nina_ says, “but I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something. Maybe the stove? I don’t know. I think it’s the weather, maybe, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m forgetting to do something, you know?”

Her voice cracking, Lucy answers: “I know. I feel the same way.”

.

Her mother gives her a journal, blank pages wrapped in black leather that feels as soft as butter.

Lucy writes: “My sister Amy hosts a true crime podcast. She took ballet for 8 years and then stopped when she discovered girls and drive through movie theatres. I love her and I miss her.”

.

What’s it like when you miss someone who never existed? When someone dies, they leave things behind. Material things you can mourn over. Lucy is a historian, she knows the value of the physical vestiges of a life. Remnants. Residue. Leftovers.

This is what Amy left behind when she decided to disappear: a sister who doesn’t know how to drag her back into existence; a mother who doesn’t know she ever loved another daughter; and a girl who loved her so much she still remembers her coffee order.

.

In 1807, Garcia Flynn holds a gun to Lucy’s head.

In 2017, Lucy walks into a coffee shop and asks the barista if she wants to go out for drinks that night.

.

Lucy knows how to do this, even if her sister would’ve said otherwise: she knows how to dance, how to move her body and lose herself in another person. She knows how to orbit around someone, she knows when she’s being drawn in closer.

“Do you ever feel like you’re missing something, something really big?” her sister's girlfriend asks her as they lie next to each other, covered in sweat and jumbled sheets, and Lucy says: nothing.

.

What’s another layer of guilt, Lucy asks herself.

.

5 weeks and 3 trips through time later, and Lucy has watched 7 people get shot in front of her. She pushes her way through the doors of the coffee shop and hears the bubblegum tones of a pop song playing overhead. It’s different today. A new barista? Did the shift schedule change? When she gets to the front of the line, she says: “Dark roast, please,” and she asks: “Where’s May?”

The barista blinks at her. “Who?”

“May, the other barista? May Lin?”

“Uh. There’s no other barista here besides like, me and two other guys.” And pushes a to-go cup of coffee into Lucy’s suddenly slack hands.

Lucy can’t – she can’t breathe but somehow she has the space to shout: “Where’s May? Where’s May?” and her cup is on the ground, and the dark coffee is seeping into her shoes, and the barista is backing up and motioning towards her manager. “Where’s May? Where’s Amy? Why do they always disappear?”

.

Three phone calls later, and this is what Lucy knows:

May Lin finished her degree in criminal psychology and moved across the country a year ago to attend law school. She exists.

Her Instagram is public, and she posts pictures of her morning coffee. Five months ago, she consistently began to post the exact same drink.

.

Phone call. Mason Industries.

Lucy doesn’t come back to this coffee shop again.

**Author's Note:**

> @ ashley love u bonch  
> title is from Mags by George Starbuck


End file.
